Automated machinery to produce bread and other pastry products conventionally use single or twin auger pumps. Such auger pumps not only move the dough, but also uniformly damage the dough due to shearing action and then homogenize the degraded dough throughout the dough mass their use to produce a high quality product id somewhat less than fully desirable.
In order to solve the problem of dough damage and degradation, attempts have been made to utilize positive displacement gear or lobe type pumps that impart less damage to the dough for pumping such viscous masses. The problem with such positive displacement pumps resides in their inability to maintain a proper prime to the pump because of the high viscosity of the dough. Maintenance of the prime to the pumps for the pumping of such highly viscous materials requires that the lobe or gear pump produce a larger than normal pressure drop from the infeed or hopper reservoir to the pump inlet to assure that adequate viscous fluid is continuously drawn into the pump.
Thus, a positive displacement gear or lobe type pump that does not damage the pastry dough to the extent that an auger type pump does while being capable of maintaining its prime would provide significant advantages in the pastry dough pumping arena.